Civic Duties and

Responsibilities

Preview Question

• How would you describe American democracy?

The study of the rights and duties of citizens

Civics

A member of a state or nation (by birth or sworn loyalty) who is entitled to individual rights

Citizen

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8Tfrij8jbE

• As a citizen, what do you feel are your individual rights?

• In your opinion, in what situations should citizens lose their individual

rights?

• In order for citizens to retain their rights, they must perform certain

duties and responsibilities.

Duty: something you HAVE to do by law

Responsibility: something you SHOULD do to help the community

Different ways to classify responsibilities

Fiscal responsibility

• Responsibilities involving money

• Paying bills

Personal Responsibility

• Responsibilities to oneself

• Graduating high school• Going to church

Moral Responsibility

• Responsibility based on right and wrong. Something you feel you should do.

• Helping your grandparents

Where would you classify getting an education? Why?

Name a situation in which a moral responsibility may conflict with a legal responsibility.

• In American History, there have been many such instances. Many famous Americans have practiced what is known as civil disobedience. This is when one knowingly breaks the law in protest of that law. Some famous examples in clude:

Boston Tea PartyDecember 16. 1773

"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brushfires in people's minds." -- Samuel Adams

• American patriots dressed as Indians threw 342 chests of tea from three British ships into Boston Harbor. The action was taken to prevent the payment of a British-imposed tax on tea and to protest the British monopoly of the colonial tea trade authorized by the Tea Act.

Susan B. AnthonyWith the adoption in 1870 of the 15th Amendment, all citizens were guaranteed the right to vote regardless of "race, color, or previous condition of servitude," but not regardless of gender.

Anthony took direct action, leading a group of women to the polls in Rochester. Arrested and awaiting trial, she took advantage of the publicity to begin a lecture tour. In 1873, she again engaged in civil disobedience, again trying to vote.

Rosa Parks

• “Woman fingerprinted. Mrs. Rosa Parks, Negro seamstress, whose refusal to move to the back of a bus touched off the bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala.,” 1956

Ezell A. Blair Jr. , David Leinhail Richmond, Joseph Alfred McNeil, and Franklin Eugene McCain

Greensboro, NC

• Four black freshmen from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University staged a sit-in at a whites-only lunch counter inside a Woolworth’s five-and-dime store in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1960, initiating a wave of successful, nonviolent protests against private-sector segregation in the United States.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Rmjt0kJF0A

Julia Butterfly Hill

• American activist and environmentalist. Hill is best known for living in a 180-foot (55 m)-tall, roughly 1500-year-old California Redwood tree for 738 days between December 10, 1997 and December 18, 1999. Hill lived in the tree, affectionately known as "Luna," to prevent loggers of the Pacific Lumber Company from cutting it down.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8rvJZGrD3o&feature=related